PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A man convicted of having sexually assaulted two women in a northeast Philadelphia park has been sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.
Forty-one-year-old Robert Palen was also ruled by a Court of Common Pleas judge Friday to be a sexually violent predator.
Jurors in April convicted Palen of assaulting having assaulted two women in Pennypack Park in 2010 and 2011.
Authorities suspected one man was responsible for the rapes of two women and the physical assault of a third, but the case wasn’t solved until Palen’s DNA matched samples collected from a sexual assault in Wisconsin.
He pleaded guilty to strangulation and sexual-assault charges in the Wisconsin case and was sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison, then extradited to Pennsylvania to face the Philadelphia charges.
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